Murder of 79 U. of Penn player shocks community

It was a little after midnight when Maria Garcia-Pellon got up out of bed and went to the kitchen to get a drink of water and the knives.

She returned to the bedroom she shared with her husband and hid the knives under her side of the bed. Then she waited for her husband to fall asleep.

When he did, she reached down, grabbed a knife, and plunged it into his throat.

How many times? The police report doesn’t say.

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It does say that Matt White woke up and struggled with his wife for control of the blade.

It ended with White, telling her, “I’m dying, I’m dying,” and collapsing on the bed.

Garcia-Pellon got dressed and drove away from the house. Where she went immediately after that is not clear. But later that day, she drove to a friend’s house. She told her friend, a woman with whom she worked at Nether Providence Elementary School, that she’d stabbed her husband. And why.

“I caught him looking at pornography. Young girls. I love kids. I had to do it,” she allegedly said.

She told the Nether Providence police the same thing.

An ambulance was called and sent to the home that the couple shared on Parkridge Drive in Wallingford.

White, 55, was found on the bed in a pool of blood. He was pronounced dead at 1:02 p.m.

His wife was taken into custody after making a detailed confession of what she had done and her reason for doing it.

According to Nether Providence Police Chief Tom Flannery, Garcia-Pellon was “very calm” and “matter of fact” when she told her story.

She was charged with first-degree murder and taken to Delaware County prison. She is being held without bail.

Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan called the case “bizarre.” He described Garcia-Pellon as “lying in wait” while her husband went to sleep. “It’s every man’s worst nightmare.”

He said numerous items had been taken from the house, including White’s computer. He said the county’s Computer Forensics Division will find out if there is anything on it relevant to the case.

“We’ll see what, if anything, he was looking at,” Whelan said, but only to get a better sense into the accused’s state of mind.

According to her attorney, Kathy Labrum, Garcia-Pellon has been suffering mental difficulties for some time. A recent attempt to have her admitted into a local mental health facility failed for some reason. People who know her, including Labrum, say that she is one of the warmest, kindest people they’ve ever met.

“Lovely, sweet and gentle,” is how one co-worker described her.

Labrum said this is a terrible family tragedy. White and Garcia-Pellon have two children: One a recent college graduate who lives in Philadelphia and another at Lafayette, a star on the women’s lacrosse team.

After meeting with her client and friend at the Delaware County prison Tuesday morning, Labrum sounded exhausted.

She said every indication is that Garcia-Pellon was not in her right mind when she stabbed her husband to death. Sources say she will be on suicide watch for the foreseeable future.

Nether Providence Elementary School Principal Al Heinle said the entire school is “shocked and stunned” over the news of Garcia-Pellon’s arrest.

“She was the meekest individual in the building,” he said.

This is the second tragedy in the last several months the Wallingford school has weathered. In November, 6-year-old Tyreece Charlow died, allegedly at the hands of his guardian, Paul Adams Jr.

Now this.

Heinle said he and his staff are just trying to keep things as normal as possible for their students.

White and his family lived in Swarthmore before moving to Wallingford a few years ago.

Tuesday, their single-story, stone home sat empty. There was no yellow crime tape. No sign of the life-and-death struggle that took place inside the home just a day earlier.

I knew Matt White. I knew him from playing pickup basketball at Swarthmore-Rutledge Elementary School. He was more famous for playing basketball for the University of Pennsylvania back in 1979, when the team made it to the Final Four and lost to Magic Johnson’s Michigan State.

At 6-foot-10, White could have dominated at the little gym in which we played, but he chose not to. Instead, he passed and rebounded and set picks for his teammates. His team usually won, but not always because he refused to dominate. He played a neighborly game.

After college, he was drafted into the NBA but went to play for a professional team in Spain. He stayed for 12 years. It was there he met his wife.

They came back to America, had two children and went to work. With the help of Labrum, Garcia-Pellon became a naturalized American citizen not long ago.

A few years back, I heard Matt suffered a stroke and was done playing basketball.

Tuesday, after hearing the news of his death, I called one of the old-timers who used to play ball with us, Whitey Varga. He’s also a former Penn basketball player.

“It’s funny,” Whitey said. “I just saw him and his wife having dinner at the Iron Hill this past weekend.”

He said that he only saw them across the bar as they were leaving so he didn’t get the chance to say hello.